Spaceplates - potential new 'lens' technology

So...in the 1960's, what sort of ripples of excitement did LED's make? Enter, the Solarplate.

Picture if you will, a 21st century version of a zone plate, where a telephoto 'lens' and a couple other 'lenses' fit in your shirt pocket. Apparently they'll use thin layers, each refracting light, thereby eliminating the usual space between lens elements.

https://www.photonics.com/Articles/Barrel-Eliminating_Optical_Element_Enables/a67071

Don't convert your current telephoto's to dinghy anchors just yet...might be a while!

First LED's were a smudgy glow...

MurrayMinchin said:

First LED's were a smudgy glow...

Click to expand...

when they managed to get into the visible spectrum, instead of the IR spectrum.

Sigh...

Notice the word "potential" in thread title?

I find it interesting.

very interesting... and yes, they will be perfected... it's only a matter of time, and time is money.

Interesting....and yes, so far more theoretical than practical...but maybe it will emerge as a technology that can change the way lenses are made.

Always remember in the 1920s there was this mad Scottish "failed inventor" who had this hairbrained idea that he could transmit live images electronically from one location to another....

Except that Campbell-Swinton made his original proposal in 1908, no one really thought he was that crazy, and by the 20's, Farnsworth and Tihanyi had solved most of the technical challenges left and were producing a working system. Campbell-Swinton's selenium-based imaging device wasn't really sensitive enough to produce a usable image, and even he described the results in 1926 as "not very successful".

My problem with this concept of spaceplates is that what they're really doing, is shortening the optical path-- but there's no discussion about diffraction, refraction, or light loss. It's an interesting concept, but it has a really long way to go before it's better than a Schmidt-Cassegrain.

Off topic but Farnsworth never got a decent image from his "image dissector" and it was Baird who actually made the thing work when he tried to "go electric". I could go on, but it would be off topic. The main point is that while we certainly shouldn't see every "possible new tech" as a great step forward, we shouldn't dismiss everything either. Some crazy sounding ideas turn out to be great.

One thing Farnsworth did do.....he lived to watch the moon landings on TV and said "They finally found something worthy to put on that screen".....of course using a field sequential colour wheel system invented by one JL Baird....

Baird did not invent the field sequential color wheel-- A. A. Polumordvinov invented the field sequential color system using two cylinders, Franenstein / Jaworksi improved it by changing it to a wheel, and then JL Baird demonstrated his version), nor was it a Baird design that was used for the moon landings-- Westinghouse based the camera on a CBS design that used a 6 color wheel.

I'm not saying he didn't contribute, but saying he invented it, when he was building on earlier technology is a bit of a stretch.